June 29
I must have been tireder than I thought, 'cause I didn't wake up until Meghan's alarm went off and it kind of scared me and I managed to roll over to get up but I was too close to the edge of the bed and flopped onto the floor instead and then while I was shaking my head to clear it she leaned over the edge and asked if I was all right.
I said that I thought I was and stood up and flexed out my wings to make sure they were okay and I'd probably have a bruise or two and a sore knee but nothing serious.
I thought that since I was already out of bed she would get right up but she didn't; her head disappeared back over the edge of the bed and then I heard the mattress shift and when I stuck my head up over the edge she was on her back with her arms crossed over her chest and her telephone under them.
Well, if she wasn't going to get up yet I wasn't either so I hopped back in bed and since she'd blocked my favorite resting spot, I put my head down on her belly instead which wasn't quite as comfortable.
She reached down and petted my head and then scratched my ears and then her telephone alarm went off again and she made it quiet again and said that she was feeling rebellious today, and went back to scratching my ears.
On the third time, though, she said she had to get up and I got up first and went to the bathroom while she was putting on her robe, and when I was done she was outside so I let her in and went back to her room to wait, and sat on the bed and flexed my leg, and my knee made a funny little pop noise and then it felt a little bit better.
I heard the shower turn off and so I got her brush off the dresser and when she came into the bedroom I was holding it in my mouth which she thought was really funny. And she sat down on the bed so that I could brush her and then she put on some lacy red underwear and when I asked her why 'cause I'd never seen her wear it before, she said it was because she was feeling rebellious and when she had it on she made a little pose like a dancer.
It was kind of a shame that she hid it under pretty boring clothes.
We both had more shredded wheat for breakfast and she hadn't even finished when I heard crunching gravel from a car and Meghan looked at her pocket telephone and realized that she was late, so she told me to finish up and make sure that the door was locked when I left, and she kissed me on the nose and I would have kissed her back but I still had a mouthful of shredded wheat.
So after I finished my breakfast I put hers in her icebox so that the milk wouldn't go bad, and washed my bowl and then I went downstairs and out and I locked the door like she'd told me.
While I was still on the porch making sure that it was locked, I saw a flap open in the bottom of the door on the neighbor's house and a cat came out and that was pretty clever. If she had something like that next to her window I could go in and out without having to use the front door.
It would have to be pretty big, though, and I knew from Aric's window that it was easier to get out than in.
While I was flying back to my apartment, I tried to decide what I wanted to do today and I thought it would be nice to fly to South Haven and sit on the beach, but I wasn't sure I'd have the energy to make it back at the end of the day. I remembered the last time I was pretty tired when I arrived there.
It was a good day for a long flight, but maybe not that far unless Mister Salvatore or Miss Cherilyn wanted to come out to South Haven and give me a ride back home at the end of the day and I wasn't sure that they'd want to.
So I thought I'd go a different direction instead. I'd followed the railroad tracks east and north but I'd never followed them west and so I thought that would be fun.
This time I thought to put some food in my vest in case I got hungry and then I called the airplane directors and got clearance to fly, but Dori asked if I could stay low until I got past the 131 Highway and I promised I would. She also advised me that there was balloon traffic near Texas Corners and to watch out for it.
I went across Western Michigan's campus, and then turned southwest when I was above the tracks and followed them along at about a hundred feet high.
I dove down under the 131 Highway bridge just 'cause that was fun (and I looked both ways to make sure that there wasn't a train coming when I did that), then started to climb up.
Since I was interested in what was on the ground, I only flew up to two thousand feet, which was above all but the tallest antenna-towers.
Pretty soon I was out of the city and over fields but there were also little neighborhoods here and there with curving roads to the houses, and also another trailer park that was bigger than the one by the park with the island.
I saw the balloon that Dori had told me about, too, and it was a long ways off. Far enough away that I didn't need to worry about crossing paths with it.
The tracks crossed under the 94 Highway near where we'd gone to watch for storms, and then they continued on their way southwest. I had just passed by a field of baseball diamonds (which are called that even though they are shaped like quarter-circles) and a grass airport which was called Kerby Field when I saw the headlights of an Amtrak off in the distance and so I dove down to get a closer look at it but I really misjudged its speed and before I could lose more than five hundred feet it zoomed by under me.
I circled around and watched it until it disappeared, and then turned around again so I was going the right way. I could see another town in front of me and I wanted to go there before I turned around.
I wound up going all the way past it and then I found a nice open field with three rows of trees where I could land and have a snack without bothering any farmer's crops.
There was a little bit of unfarmed ground alongside the trees and they also made for good shade. I sat under a tree that was at the very end of the row and admired how tall the corn was—no matter how much I stretched I couldn't see over it with my hooves on the ground. It was really close together, too—I was used to rows where a pony could walk through them and look at her crop, but here I don't think there was any way a human could pass without knocking over the stalks.
I opened up my can of anchovies and ate it and then relaxed for a little bit, then I put the empty can back in my vest and flew off again.
I'd just gotten back to the 94 Highway when I saw another train coming out of Kalamazoo and since I knew how fast they went I dove down and landed on the grassy embankment right next to the bridge so I could watch it go by up close, just 'cause I'd never seen anything that big move that fast.
And up close it was even faster than I thought it would be. I felt a strange impulse to move towards it as it got closer and then before I could even blink it zipped by me in a long silver flash and was gone. It was both terrifying and exhilarating. When I'd been on it, I hadn't know it was going that fast. I guess it was different when you were inside of it and couldn't feel the wind blowing in your face.
No wonder the windows don't open.
I was so distracted by it that I almost ran into the electrical wires when I took off again. I knew they were there, too—I'd gone around them when I landed—but I'd forgotten by the time I took off again and I had looked back at the highway because I heard a rumbly truck and then when I turned around I was almost on top of them and I kind of did a mid-air tumble to avoid them and then made a kind of weird loop to avoid them and the trees and the highway and the train tracks.
I probably couldn't have picked a worse spot to land and look at the train.
I paid close attention to where I was going until I was sure I was high enough to not run into any more wires, then I went higher just to be sure, and then glided for a bit while I refocused on flying and not running into things that I shouldn't.
Then I took a good look at the sky because it would be just my luck that there would be a balloon or a blimp or an airplane sneaking up on me, but luckily the sky was free of other obstructions. And there still weren't any clouds, either.
The rest of the trip back to my apartment was familiar and uneventful. This time I went above the 131 Highway bridge over the tracks, since I now knew just how fast the trains went. I'd thought that I had a good enough line of sight for them to not catch me by surprise but now I knew that I was wrong.
When I got back the first thing I did was go into the kitchen and drink some water—humans are always carrying around little plastic bottles of water and they were smarter than I was. I'd thought of food but not anything to drink, and if I was going to go on longer flights I'd want to have water.
Then I had my lunch and finished my meal with another plate of alfalfa.
It was a good afternoon for reading, so I went out on the balcony and read through all of Nehemiah, which was mostly about him going to Jerusalem and finding out that the walls had fallen down and getting people to rebuild the walls and the gates. All of the gates had names, and for some reason one of them was named the Dung Gate. I'm surprised that they didn't come up with a better name for it.
Since I didn't have anything else planned for the afternoon, I pushed the papasan chair next to the window and preened my wings then dozed off for a little bit. I woke up at bird-dinnertime and watched them eat. There was a fledgling robin who looked like he hadn't been flying all that long and he was pretty unsure of himself as he swooped at the feeder then got scared off by the birds that were already there even though he was bigger than them.
As long as I watched he didn't get anything to eat, 'cause he just wasn't bold enough. Then I saw him fly out of the tree and down to the ground, so maybe he was going to pick up the seeds that had fallen onto the lawn.
I had a salad for dinner and decided that since I'd been lazy all afternoon I didn't really deserve any alfalfa.
Then after I'd washed my bowl I remembered that I hadn't checked my mail so I did but the mailbox was empty, which was disappointing.
I flew up but didn't see anybody in the next-door backyard, and then I went around to my downstairs neighbor's front door and knocked so that I could introduce myself 'cause I hadn't done that yet but nobody answered, and so I went back to my apartment and got out my climate science book and skimmed through it just to make sure that I hadn't forgotten any of the important words because I'd gotten back in the habit of thinking of weather in Equestrian and I didn't want to sound dumb when I met with the weather lady tomorrow.
Luckily, I did remember almost all of them. Studying them with Aric had really been helpful although it also made me miss having sex with him.
When I was done with the book I paced around the apartment for a bit and then decided to go on an evening flight before I went to bed, so put my vest and blinking light and went around the neighborhood just a little way above the trees, and it was really pretty to see all the lights below me.
I found out that it's a lot harder to find my apartment from the air after dark. All the landmarks I was used to seeing to line up on it were hidden in the dark, so instead of a direct flight I went to Main Street, found Berkley and then followed that back in.
I had just laid down on the futon when I heard a car drive into the backyard and then I heard a door downstairs open and a woman and a man were talking and giggling and I thought about getting out of bed and going down and introducing myself but before I could make up my mind they got quiet and I thought that maybe they had gone to bed and if they had they probably didn't want to be bothered.